


I'm intercontinental when I eat French toast

by NeoVenus22



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-29
Updated: 2009-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 11:16:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes life puts distance between two people.  Sometimes it's half a continent.  Sometimes there's a reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm intercontinental when I eat French toast

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 1x22, 'Leave it to Beaver'; 2x11, 'Donut Run'; 2x22, 'Not Pictured'

There's a splotch of something on the bicep of Duncan's shirt, white and irregularly-shaped. It looks sticky, and Logan almost says something twisted, but pulls out impressive deduction skills, and places mental outlines around the bottle on the counter and the gurgle of the next room, and realizes it's baby formula. The notion presses his lips together in a thin line, anchors him to the splintered, uneven wooden floor of the bungalow.

"What brings you here," Duncan says, he does not ask, because he already knows. His voice a study in nonchalance, his face tanner than Logan remembers. Duncan registers the white mark on the dark sleeve of his arm, dismisses it in the same eye flick. He screws off the cap of the baby bottle, and turns to the sink, dismissing Logan just as easily. Logan can't tell if it's an act or not.

Logan's not in the mood for beating around the bush, although he hasn't relaxed in weeks, and wouldn't mind beating something. "Turns out the father figure isn't as untouchable as he thinks." Something wells thick in Logan's throat, something he recognizes enough to know he doesn't want it, and he tries to push it back before Duncan hears it in his voice. Something ekes past his defenses, a cough leaks out. A muffled, tiny pop, like a pistol equipped with a silencer. "Well, maybe he's untouchable, but not unshootable. Gun to the back of the head." Unbidden, driven by something so black it's foreign even to him, he lifts his hand, points an imaginary gun to the back of Duncan's head, flicks off the safety, presses the trigger. "Bam."

Duncan turns around just a millisecond after his hand drops and the gun is holstered in Logan's mind. "I heard," he says. He doesn't say he's sorry, because it's a lie that no one would believe. Neither of them are sorry. Aaron was a motherfucker, in every screwed up sense of the word. A motherfucker, a daughterfucker, a sisterfucker, a girlfriendfucker. He lied and cheated and killed to get what he wanted, and no one's sorry that Kendall Casablancas got out of her shower to find brain splatter staining the back of couch. Except maybe Kendall, and the owner of the Neptune Grande.

"Yeah, bet you did. _US Weekly_?"

"_People_. _US Weekly_ is trash." Duncan was never the best at banter, and he's clearly wasted his limited repertoire for this conversation, even though it's obvious he wasn't listening for most of it. For the first time since Logan had banged on the door, Duncan meets his eyes. "Did you get the address from Veronica?"

Depends on how much you stretch the definition of 'get.' It was stolen rather than borrowed, and Veronica thinks he's upstate, dealing with Trina and lawyers. It doesn't matter, anyway, because he knows what Duncan is really asking. There's no point in beating around the bush on this one, otherwise this visit will have a far different outcome.

"She's fine," he says, but his voice isn't as callous and superior as he was expecting it to be. As a result, Duncan doesn't react the way Logan was expecting, either. He doesn't tense, he doesn't clock Logan in the jaw, he just holds the clean baby bottle over the surprisingly clean sink to let the last drops of water slide out. "I mean, as fine as she ever is." He laughs without mirth, but with a measure of understanding. "She's like a shit magnet."

"That's why we keep going back," Duncan answers without missing a beat, then puts away the bottle in achingly neat and sparse cabinets. The apartment reminded Logan of Duncan's room back at the illustrious Kane estate. The walls were a cornflower blue that Duncan's mom had chosen, with some tasteful art carefully arranged. Duncan kept everything in his room compartmentalized. Too bad his own head wasn't the same way.

Although Duncan is calmer now, he notices. Duncan was usually a bastion of outward calm, owing to his heavy dosage of meds. Logan didn't know if Duncan was still drugging up, but if he was, whatever cocktail he had finally settled on was working miracles. That flash of madness just beyond his eyes that had lived there for a year-plus looks like it's gone. Logan envies him a little.

"You and I are cut from the same cloth, Dunc."

"Yeah?" Duncan doesn't have anything else to occupy his hands or attention, so he bears the full brunt of Logan's attention. Logan closes the distance in a step or two, angling his shoulders, drawing up to his full height.

"Yeah," he lies. They're not. They've both been born of the same miserable experiences, but Duncan is passive, Logan is aggressive, and only one of them is capable of forgetting. Of course, Duncan has the chemical advantage there. Logan opts for more traditional methods.

He doesn't wait to jam his hand down the front of Duncan's khaki shorts. He didn't drop a shitload of money to take a last-minute flight halfway across the world so he can wait. (He flew business class; the anxious looks the stiff suits gave him when they realized who he was made his chest tighten, but watching beads of sweat pop on their foreheads when he upped the crazy eyes gave him perverse pleasure.)

It's been too long, because Duncan's cock is lighter than he remembers. Maybe it's because Logan's gotten used to the heft of Dick's namesake, or maybe it's just because Duncan is soft. Logan can change that, and part of his brain still remembers just how to bring DK to a quick and useful erection. It's a skill well studied and practiced, and if he'd put half his brainpower towards schoolwork, then he probably could've done something more with his future than buy his way into the Hearst freshman class.

Logan licks the spot on Duncan's neck that always makes Duncan mutter incoherently. This is familiar, yes, but it's not what it was. He almost wishes things could go back: to when Veronica was the least cynical of the group, and when Lilly manipulated them all, and when Duncan's raspy cry of _yes!_ was the biggest and most powerful secret Logan had to worry about keeping.

To his surprise, Duncan plops his hand on Logan's shoulder and holds him at bay. Duncan's an athlete, or was, but Logan doesn't remember him ever being this strong.

"This isn't a good idea," Duncan says.

Logan smirks. "I've heard that before." Usually right before his cock ended up in Duncan's mouth. It was a get out of jail free card. Saying those words absolved the user of blame if guilt struck later. Chalk it up to drinks or drugs, whatever.

But Duncan shook his head with a stunning amount of resolution in his eyes. "Sorry, Logan."

"What, what is it? Is it Veronica?" Veronica, much as he loved her, had a habit of fucking up so much in Logan's life, he wouldn't be surprised if now, even on another continent, she was intent on ruining one of the few good things Logan had left.

"It's Lilly."

"Jesus Christ." Logan had long since lost count of how many nights that name and that face had spent him spiraling into one form of oblivion or another. She was no saint. She certainly wasn't a martyr. How come they still all mourned her like she was? "She's dead, Duncan. She's fucking... it's done."

Duncan's brows knit, and his glare was laser-powerful. "Not that Lilly," he said, and tilted his head in direction of the other room. Shit. The baby. Logan hadn't known. Double shit. Logan's hard-on ebbs like magic. Nothing like tangible consequences to kill the libido right out of a guy. Never mind that neither he nor Duncan had a womb to speak of.

"I can't just say fuck-all to the world."

"Here's some breaking news for you, DK, you already have. Just in case you didn't notice the kangaroo in your backyard or the pizza delivery coming in on a boomerang, you're on another damn continent. If that's not saying fuck-all, I don't know what is."

"It's different now," says Duncan, and Logan hears it more in his tone than in his words. "I'm not that guy anymore."

"Well, isn't Neptune's favorite little son all grown up now," Logan scoffs with more force than he means to. Deep down, he's admiring, because Duncan's finally done what the two of them used to talk about at length: he's gotten the hell outta Dodge, made a life for himself that doesn't revolve around celebrity or politics or all of the other bullshit Logan's been mired in. "Still, I'm almost hurt you didn't bother to say goodbye. A farewell blowjob would've been nice."

Duncan actually laughs at that, and Logan is so floored by the sound that his follow up dies on his lips. It's more bitter, dark humor than anything else, but it's still unusual. "Yeah, don't I know it."

"I came all this way," Logan says, his fingers trapped and twisted in one of Duncan's belt loops. He opts for the faux-waifishness that has always worked on Duncan in the past. "Are you just gonna let me leave without resolution?"

Duncan's eyes close and he grinds his pelvis against Logan in what Logan recognizes as irrepressible instinct. Logan grips Duncan's waist to hold him still for a bruising, damning kiss. It's perhaps the most openly affectionate they've ever been with each other, outside of the comfortable public bubble of 'hetero life mates,' which is the hugest lie. Neither of them are completely hetero, nor do either of them have any intention of this relationship lasting for life. They've both learned that life is too short, but Logan is too fucked up to let his go on without this one last encounter. He wants to know if he still has power over Duncan.

Duncan's teeth close gently, sensuously, over Logan's lower lip, just seconds before he steps out of the way. Logan takes a beat before his eyes fully open, and he realizes in one fell move that he never had the power. Duncan never chased anyone halfway across the world, after all.

"When does your flight leave?" Duncan asks, and Logan almost doesn't hear the question, he's so busy thinking how irrevocably fucked up he really is. He's trying to twist out the tabloid headlines of this latest development: 'Orphaned Echolls Son Takes Global Trek for Reunion with Criminal Boyfriend.' Logan giggles a little, insanely.

"Shit if I know. Sometime in the morning. I hate flying."

"You wanna stay for dinner? I'm not much of a cook; I mostly just have baby food and takeout lying around. But we can figure something out." There's a long pause, where Duncan's palm presses flat and white-skinned against the countertop. "You can meet Lilly."

This is not the life Logan wants. It's probably not even the life Duncan wanted for himself. But there's something about Duncan's tone, something buried deep beneath the tentative smile, that is taunting and superior, even if Duncan doesn't mean it, which he probably doesn't.

"Yeah, sure," he says, and the words are out of his mouth before he really knows about it. "Throw a wallaby on the barbie."

"Oh, so you like the meat tender, huh?"

Logan cocks an eyebrow, falls into the rhythm of the dialogue to patently avoid acknowledging the pang in his heart. "I think you know how tender I like my meat," he answers, to the ragged, unfamiliar sound of Duncan's genuine amusement.

"Some things never change," Duncan says. He rifles through his cabinets and pulls out a few cans of processed food, soup or sauce. His answer is a stock response, a cliché, and sometimes Logan embraces them and sometimes he doesn't. This is one of the latter times, because Duncan means it to ease the tension, to try and apologetically steer things back to the point where they're just friends and not sometimes fuckbuddies. Some things never change, but some things do, and some people get left behind.


End file.
